The judges selected Hadoop because the distributed computing software framework was a greater catalyst for innovation than other nominees such as WikiLeaks and Apple's iPad. Hadoop had, they said, "the potential to completely change the face of media innovations across the globe".

Described as the "Swiss Army Knife of the 21st century," the judges thought that Hadoop's capability to enable applications that could perform sophisticated manipulation on "colossal amounts of data" could be seen as "the beginning of a new data revolution". They also noted that Hadoop is available under a free licence.

Members of the Hadoop Project Management Committee were on hand to receive the award while Doug Cutting, creator of the Hadoop project, appeared in a video at the presentation.